Five firefighters and a fire engine were tied up for an hour after a pranker ‘cemented’ his head inside a microwave oven yesterday afternoon.

The crew, from Fallings Park Community Fire Station, responded at 1.49pm to a call from West Midlands Ambulance Service who needed support at the incident in the garage of a house in Wolverhampton. Watch Commander Shaun Dakin, the officer in charge of the fire crew who responded, said:

“As funny as this sounds, this young man could quite easily have suffocated or have been seriously injured. He and a group of friends had mixed seven bags of Polyfilla which they then poured around his head, which was protected by a plastic bag inside the microwave.

“The oven was being used as a mould and the mixture quickly set hard. By the time we were called the man's friends had already been trying to free him for an hour and a half. They'd inserted an air tube into the 22-year-old’s mouth, to help him breathe. 

“Taking the microwave apart was tricky, because a lot of it was welded. We video-called our technical rescue colleagues for advice and eventually managed to get him unstuck. We had to be extremely careful with the screwdriver, working so closely to his head.

“It took us nearly an hour to free him. All of the group involved were very apologetic, but this was clearly a call-out which might have prevented us from helping someone else in genuine, accidental need.”